Thursday, July 5, 2012

‘No screen bigger than theater’

Ever since its
founding years, the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA)
has been intrinsically linked to broadcast media arts.

Founder Cecile Guidote wrote: “Theater does not solely refer to the
legitimate stage, which has been a powerful influence on human
civilization for 2,500 years. But also includes its amazing 20th century
offspring—film, radio, and television. She envisioned the presentation
of “outstanding plays and master pieces on television and radio.

Broadcast media could be a powerful social force that would bring a quality cultural experience to millions of Filipinos.”

For
PETA’s 45th Theater Season, PETA goes back to this founding idea and
further interrogates the role of broadcast media in contemporary
Philippine society. PETA dedicates an entire year of examining the
historical, cultural, and aesthetic relationship between the two media
forms and how both have affected and shaped modern-day society and
popular culture. The season will illustrate the interrelationship of
live performance and the broadcast media.

PETA also seizes the
opportunity of its 45th Theater Season to draw attention to the
community in which it resides: Quezon City. Considered by many as the
City of Stars, Quezon City is home to major TV networks, movie producing
companies and theater groups, cradling some of most influential players
in Philippine pop culture. The season hopes to harness this power
through its productions and related events and in so doing create an
awareness of the vital role the arts play in the formation of society
and its ethos.

Through original plays as well as other related
events PETA invites its audience on a journey that explores the “hybrid”
multiplicity that is the Arts. PETA brings together talents from the
Philippine theater, film and television industries in two of its new
plays: Bona and ‘D Wonder Twins of Boac.

Bona, a film by
National Artist and PETA founding member, Lino Brocka, will be adapted
for theater and set in contemporary time, while ‘D Wonder Twins of Boac
(a Filipino musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night)
will be a parody of how the Filipino film industry evolved in the ‘60s
and ‘70s.

PETA’s theater event TAKE 1 inspired by Lino Brocka’s
actor-training practice is collaboration between theater and television.
Brocka always believed that the theater performance experience was a
necessary part of any film actor’s training background. With this in
mind PETA designed TAKE 1as a concert of scenes that will draw from the
best plays of world classics as well as Filipino original works. For
four nights, audiences will be delighted to witness familiar scenes
performed by different sets of actors from television and theater.

Apart
from the two new plays, PETA opens its doors to a new generation of
filmmakers with a festival “Cinemalaya Retrospective” that features the
best short and full-length films produced by Cinemalaya in the past five
years.

Rounding up the season’s offerings, PETA’s hit musicals
will have a special re-run at the PETA Theater Center this year: William
from July 27 to 29, Batang Rizal from August 3 to 12, and Mga Kuwento
ni Lola Basyang from October 5 to 14. PETA also hosts Agnes Locsin’s
choreographed work Puno, Noel Cabangon’s concert Tuloy ang Byahe,
Vincent De Jesus’ Himala (The Concert) and Storybook Theater for
Education Project’s (STEP) Buklat.